CHAPTER SIX

      AMALIE DID SOMETHING SACRILEGIOUS. In a fit of temper, she threw the precious score onto the floor.

      Immediately she felt wretched. It wasn’t the poor score’s fault that all the good feelings that had grown throughout the day had vanished. It was the composer’s rotten grandson who had caused that with his rotten innuendoes.

      Focus, Amalie, she told herself sternly.

      But it was hard to focus on the sheets of wonderful music before her when all she could think about was wrestling Talos’s clothes off him and seeing for herself if he was as divine naked as he was when clothed.

      That body...

      It would be hard. Every inch of it. But what would his skin feel like? Would it be hard too? Or would it be smooth? How would it feel against her own skin?

       Focus!

      It was none of her business what Talos Kalliakis’s skin felt like, or how hard his body was, or to discover if it was true that the size of a man’s feet was proportionate to the size of his...

       Focus!

      Talos had enormous feet. And enormous hands...

      He also had a smile that churned her belly into soft butter.

      ‘Stop it!’ This time she shouted the words aloud and clenched her fists.

      She’d woken that morning with a sense of dread that the gala was now less than four weeks away. If she didn’t master the composition, then it didn’t matter what tricks Talos had up his sleeve to get her performing onstage—she would be humiliated regardless. Right at that moment all that mattered was the composition.

      Sitting herself on the floor, she hitched her skirt to the top of her thighs, crossed her legs and closed her eyes. There she sat for a few minutes, concentrating on nothing but her breathing—a technique taught to her by her father, who had confessed in a conspiratorial manner that it was the breathing technique her mother had learnt when she’d been in labour with Amalie. By all accounts her mother had ignored the midwife’s advice and demanded more drugs.

      The thought brought a smile to her face and pulled her out of the trance-like state she’d slipped into.

      The edginess that had consumed her since Talos’s brief visit had subsided a little, enough for her to put the sheets of music back onto her stand and press ‘play’ on the tape recorder.

      As she waited for the backing music to begin she couldn’t help thinking she should have gone for a workout, which would have cleared her angst so much better than any meditation technique.

      She nestled her violin under her chin and as the first notes of the accompaniment played out she counted the beats and began to play.

      Soon she was immersed in the music, so much so that when a loud rap on the front door echoed through to the living room she had to physically pull herself out of it. A quick glance at her watch showed she’d been playing for two and a half hours.

      She yanked the door open just as Talos raised his knuckles for another rap.

      ‘Have you never heard the word patience before?’ she scolded.

      He grinned and held up a large cardboard box, the motion causing a warm waft of scent to emit from it. ‘I’m too hungry for patience, little songbird. I bring us food.’

       Us?

      The divine smell triggered something in her belly, making it rumble loudly. With a start she realised she’d forgotten to eat the tray of food a member of his villa’s staff had brought to the cottage for her earlier that evening.

      Since their first trip to his gym, lunch and dinner had been brought to her on Talos’s orders. She knew it was only the fear that she would become anaemic or something, and faint from hunger onstage, that prompted him to do it, rather than any regard for her, but his concern touched her nonetheless.

      The tray from earlier was still on the dining table, untouched. A warm, almost fluffy feeling trickled through her blood that he’d noticed.

      Hesitating for only a moment, she let him in and headed to the kitchen, grabbed a couple of plates and some cutlery, and took them through to the dining area of the living room.

      What was she supposed to do? Insist that he leave when he’d gone to the trouble of bringing her food, just because she kept having erotic thoughts about him? It would be incredibly rude. He might have used blackmail to get her here, but since then he’d treated her decently. He’d treated her well. Thoughtfully. She wasn’t a prisoner, as she’d feared she would be, but had his whole household staff at her disposal for whatever she wanted or needed.

      More than any of that, she would be spending a lot more time with him in the coming weeks. She had to get used to feeling off-centre when she was with him. She had to. She refused to become a gibbering idiot in his presence.

      Talos held aloft a bottle of rosé retsina. ‘Glasses?’

      Once they were settled at the table, Talos busy removing the foil lids of the dozen boxes spread out before them, she said, ‘I didn’t think there would be any takeaways open on a Sunday night.’

      One of the chattier members of Talos’s staff had warned her yesterday to get anything she needed on Saturday, as the island mostly shut down on a Sunday.

      ‘There aren’t—I got the chefs at the palace to cook for us.’

      Oh, yes. He was a prince. In Paris his royalty was something she’d been acutely aware of. Here, in the relaxed atmosphere of Agon, it was an easy thing to forget.

      ‘And they have proper takeaway boxes to hand?’

      ‘The palace kitchens are ten times the size of this cottage and cater for all eventualities,’ he answered lightly, pouring the retsina.